Our fast-paced world is also getting happier

Times Square, Manhattan: cities have been faster places than the countryside for centuriesCredit:
Corbis

If you live in the British countryside, you don’t have to go abroad to visit a foreign country. You just get on the train, or drive down the motorway, to London. And there, as you watch the hustle and bustle, the hurrying and scurrying, you find yourself wondering what all these people are actually racing towards.

"A child born in Chelsea will race around a branch of Waitrose, shoving food into his trolley, more than twice as fast as his country cousin..."

It’s always been known that cities are faster places. In the 19th century in America, it was said that a New Yorker “always walks as if he has a good dinner before him and a bailiff behind him”. But it turns out that this process follows scientific laws: the faster the community, the speedier the pace of life. A child born in Chelsea will race around a branch of Waitrose, shoving food into his trolley, more than twice as fast as his country cousin, who will stop to pick out the produce. Play the two of them a pause of exactly the same length, and the anxious urbanite will experience it as lasting twice as long.

London today is more than just a bustling metropolis – it’s a symbol. A symbol of a world that seems to be getting faster all the time, in which money and ideas flow around the world at lightning pace, and workers and families feel like they’re racing ever faster to keep up.

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Speed dating. Instant messaging. Flash crashes. So much of our modern culture seems to be based around – driven by – speed. This is the idea I explore in my new book, The Great Acceleration: the idea that technology is driving on the pace of life in ways that are often thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

Should we worry about this? Well, the most obvious reason for this increasing speed, apart from the fact that computers are getting faster, is because we like it. Mobile phones, for example, could have been precision-engineered to hook into our brains’ reward systems, delivering little bursts of pleasure every time we get a new message.

In one study, 220 students were asked to try going without them for 72 hours. Only three of them managed it. Anyone living in London and other big cities, or even visiting them for the day, will have seen people walking down the street, faces glued to their phones – or sitting at the dinner table, ignoring those around them to sneak glances at their Facebook account. Most of us have been those people.

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But have we really crossed the borderline between enthusiasm and addiction? I’m not so sure. Take the way we raise our children. There are all kinds of panics about how they spend so much time staring at screens, getting up to all kinds of online mischief rather than running around outside as God intended. And social media, with its emphasis on appearances, often seems like a perfect breeding ground for insecurity and anxiety.

"Ever since the invention of the Bessemer process, people have been complaining about the ways in which technology is making our lives faster."

Yet kids are actually watching less television, rather than more – possibly because they find it so slow-paced compared with the constant interaction of the internet. And while they’re glued to other screens, what they’re using them for is usually social interaction – keeping in touch with their real-life friends. Yes, they need to get out in the fresh air, too. But most statistics don’t show a sudden collapse in moral fibre. On the contrary: the young people who have grown up with technology are drinking and smoking less than their parents, and working harder.

Ever since the invention of the Bessemer process, people have been complaining about the ways in which technology is making our lives faster. And we’re biologically predisposed to listen to such criticism and worry about it. That’s why pessimistic prophecies about the future sound more intelligent, even though the optimistic ones have a far better track record.

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We shouldn’t be overly Utopian, or cavalier, about the changes that technology is making to our lives. But nor should we assume that we are racing only towards our destruction. Society is certainly polarising as acceleration takes hold – between fast and slow, urban and rural, old and young.

But neither a fast or a slow life is “right” or “wrong”: each has its pros and cons. And even if you’re in the fast lane, it’s possible to pull over: you can be on Twitter, and still read Proust; grab quick snacks at work but cook proper meals at weekends.

The changes that technology is making to our society are big and fascinating and often scary. But the accelerated lifestyle seems to be one that many of us prefer – and profit from. For the moment at least, the speed freaks pounding the city pavements are mostly doing so with a spring in their step.